Prisoner of pain
by coleholic
Summary: What if cole really died... ? Trapped in a nameless void, Phoebe is his only hope... but what if her choice will doom them both?
1. the race

Setting: in the bathroom in LONG LIVE THE QUEEN. Phoebe's POV  
  
The dim light of the moon plays blurry shadows across my face. All I can hear is the roaring of my heart erupted inside of me as the cold smooth wooden door caressed with my shaking hand. It seems hard to believe that on the other side of the door the love of my life, my angel and the one who I believed to be my path and road to destiny was standing there. He was standing there, the cindering flames hovering in his hands, his eyes two dark holes, a void impossible to fill. I know, in the very depths of my heart, in that tiny space that used to grasp onto the last shreds of hope that there's no turning back.  
  
He's evil.  
  
Cole was evil.  
  
Like a fairytale disintegrating before my very own eyes, evil has threaded its way like a sinister black spider. It has destroyed my fairytale with its smothering web, veiling all the joy and happiness I had once believed was mine. Bliss that I had believed I was destined to possess. Ironic how the cruel clockworks of fate had twisted my fairytale around, had wrenched, it far away from my ivory hands.  
  
Now he was standing outside, pulling my insides apart, like an ocean my emotions roar and crash inside me and now all the people I love are asking me to choose. A choice that I cannot make, A choice which will haunt me like a ghost, interlace its icy fingers around my everything; my dream, my hopes until it suffocated them all. Intoxicating me with every breath. This choice will form a mist around me, like a mask it will twist my destiny, it will shape my fate into a treacherous journey either without my sisters or.without Cole.  
  
They are waiting, they are waiting for me and I feel like a runner, in a colossal stadium, only this time no one's cheering. There's an emptiness in the air, which lingers on my skin and I know from the moment the door clicks, my race has begun. A race against time and a race for love. I can't think and I feel like the gun has fired rhythmically urging me to start. Urging me to kill my husband. I open the door and like a nightmare lurking in front of me I see my husband and my sisters.  
  
The flames hover in his hand and all I see is that bright flame. Flickering and dancing before my eyes. I seem to step out of my body, the race is on but I cannot move. I am paralysed and bounded by my own emotions and fear takes over my every joint and muscle. I tremble like an autumn leaf threatening to fly off and I feel like I have stepped out of my body. Like a spectator in the empty stadium, I watch myself, my vision blurred with salty tears. They carve their way down my face and hang like bright jewels from the frame of my face. I see myself, picking up the shimmering white crystal and kiss my husband.  
  
But I feel nothing, I am numb and I am still paralysed. Beat me! Scream at me but don't bind me! I want to cry out, but my body does not obey and instead, I watch like a prisoner from her cell. The cold rusted bars hang menacingly before me, restraining me and separating me from reality. I see the pain in my own eyes as I watch myself embrace my husband for one last time. I see the guilt mirror from my eye to his and I can't feel my heart beating inside of me anymore.  
  
Instead, I watched intrigued and still bound. I leave my husband and place the crystal on the floor. His chocolate eyes immediately cry out at me to save him, to save him from this hell of having a beast lurking inside of him, roaming inside of him and ripping his insides. But I see myself being received by the strong supporting arms of my sisters and my throat tightens as I choke out words, which seem so foreign to me now.  
  
I hear myself croak out the words, like daggers they dig into my love and slowly, the life begins to spill out of him. It seeps out like blood and I see his expression. A face forlorn and guilty, he wears a mask engraved of tears that burn their way down into a nameless void. White lights blind me and suddenly, I can feel myself again, I can feel my heart quivering beneath the cage of my ribs.  
  
I want to cry out, I want to scream at fate, I want to beat myself and hurt myself until I am dead. Desire flows to the surface of my body as I reach out to be with my husband. To be with him in his grave but like prison guards, my sisters hold me back. They hold me back to join the execution of my husband. With a final blinding light I close my eyes tight. So tightly I can almost imagine my forehead carved of intricate lines and I can feel my eyelids pressed tight against my skin.  
  
I suddenly hear nothing, nothing but silence. Yet ironically, the sharp scalpel of silence cuts into my mind and seems so loud I want to scream. I open my eyes. Debris carpets the ground and a scorch mark burns the floor. My vision swims as I struggle to see through my waterfall of tears. I want to lift the curtains of my sheded tears and to see my husband again.  
  
I make out a faint silhouette as a lone solitary figure stands in front of me. I gasp, could it be Cole? The world around me seemed to be spine- chillingly still as my heart skips a beat. Did heaven open up its merciful arms........  
  
  
  
and let my love live? 


	2. star contestant

I tremor in sweet eagerness like a restless child on Christmas morning. I feel my eyes strain through the shadowy white smoke and like a curtain being drawn back, the torturing layers of mist segregate and I see the figure clearly. The monster unleashed inside of me as I stared into ....... not Cole's eyes but Leos.  
  
I felt the rage detonate inside of me as I hear voices echo around me but I dismiss them. The voices seem to be drifting further and further away until all I could hear was the throbbing of my own caged heart and I feel the thorns of pain piercing deep into me and the next thing I know, my arms are flailing out everywhere like an insane person. They try to hold me back but I tap into the numb pain inside of me and I hit Leo over and over again. I finally succumb to the yearning in my body as I listen to it patiently. As patient as a loving mother can be with her child and I surrender to every vibe of my body, every joint and muscle cries out to hurt someone, to take revenge on someone because my Cole was dead.  
  
My dreams had been shattered and I wanted everyone else to suffer, I wanted the shattered pieces to stab into them just as they had hurt me. I wanted my sisters to feel the tantalizing emotions I was feeling at that moment. I wanted them to be my fellow prisoners and to weep with me, to suffer with me and to be encaged in that barren tarnished prison.  
  
I can hear their voices crying out to me, saying that it was ok. The nauseating sweetness to their voices, like viscous honey, it oozes down my throat and I feel suffocated. I feel like vomiting all my insides out. But their voices are too sweet to be trusted, too solacing to convict. The ground looms up to me, its strong magnets wrench me down to the floor as I sink slowly onto the cold hard ground. My hands shake and I feel a river of blood drench my hands, saturating it.  
  
The blood of Cole; My husband whom I had built my world around and who had wrapped me up in warm fluffy layers of bliss and joy. His blood now stained my hands, blood that was invisible to all but me. Crimson red, it drips a silent song that only my ears will hear. I feel arms around me, trying to reassure me but I flinch away as if stung by a wasp. I sense the icy atmosphere envelop around me. I want to be left alone, that's what I want to shout and yell out to my sisters. But it comes out as a pathetic stutter, my voice barely audible. Instead, a hoarse whisper escapes my throat so softly a slight breeze could have carried it away to nothingness.  
  
I feel hesitation around me as I hear footsteps vibrate the ground as it delicately fades away into the far distance. I sit there on the bitterly hard floor and my face contorts into an ugly expression of pain. My skin feels too tight and suddenly, I feel so tired as if I have fought too many battles, too many wars to which I have lost Tired of my life being pulled into a hurricane of pain and hurt all the time. Tired of life and all the waves of pain it washes over me again and again. Life seemed to have taken a sick pleasure in entrapping me within my own suffering.  
  
My dreams had distorted themselves into inescapable sorrow. A nightmare, a hell dripping full of guilt and bereavement. My mouth twists into a contemptuous smile, how life knows how to break my soul and devastate it is beyond my every knowledge, I thought sarcastically. A mystery still waiting to be solved and rediscovered, life is a cruel heartless monster that wrenches love away from me. As helpless as a lost traveller at sea hanging onto his last splinters of wood, I have become the star contestant in life's sick games. I find love and what does life do? It pours all its evil and cruelness into every crevasse of it. It forces the source into Cole and leaves me abandoned and discarded like a meaningless piece of debris on the dirty sidewalk.  
  
Lost of a sister and a husband, my heart cannot endure anymore, the scars are invisible but will never heal. I have worn the fake mask of happiness on my face for too long, now it feels too tight. For too long have I fought every battle, scars concealed deep within me will never go away. My lungs fill with the last scorching perfume of the air around me as I conjure up all my energy and a fireball finds its way into my palms. 


	3. The finish

My hands slowly unfasten themselves as a fire hovers. It mocks me as it dances before me releasing agonising emotions within me. I see my reflection on the dust-covered mirror. A girl, who's been through too much, her innocence and love shattered before her own eyes. I look into my own eyes as I see a reflection staring back at me. Like two strangers, we awkwardly stare at each other. Her eyes are red and swollen as if she had been crying for eternity, her lips dry and cracked like a desert. Her face is colourless and she seems almost lifeless, almost transparent.  
  
She longs to be with her dead husband, she longs to be cold and numb with him in their grave. To lie there with him forever. Ashes flicker past as a soft delicate breeze makes her hair dance to a silent heartbreaking song of grieve. She is expressionless but in her eyes, she possesses a heart- melting look of sorrow, an unbreakable and intriguing look, which captivates me. Her eyes spell out the words pain and the watery layer on top of them suddenly slips off like soft silk and drapes and slinks down her face. Those diamond water drops slide down to her face as she stares back at me.  
  
I see her raise her hand slightly and with a final smile as if she is sharing a secret that only we share, the fireball she holds in her hands plummets towards me. I look down and see my arm doing the same just as I see blurred shadows run towards me yelling for me to stop but no one can stop me or the girl in the mirror.  
  
The fireball reflects off the mirror and plunges towards me. At first I feel nothing until I look down and I can smell the intoxicating stench of burning flesh. I see my sisters staring at me in disbelief and devastation. Suddenly, a silence dominates the air as I see once again a faint silhouette as a lone solitary figure stands in front of me.  
  
This time I know it's my love coming to embrace me, to wrap me up in his soft bubble of protection. I hear my sisters crying as they kneel over my limp and lifeless corpse on the ground. I smiled a true smile in a long time as I gazed into the twinkling eyes of Cole,  
  
.... finally I had finished the race. 


End file.
